Free slimming club passes on the NHS
Privatisation fears over WeightWatchers deal
OVERWEIGHT Scots are being sent to WeightWatchers and Scottish Slimmers on the NHS.
Doctors in Grampian and Taysi de are referring patients to 12-week slimming classes, which cost up to £65, for free.
People with a BMI of 30 or more, including women with an average dress size of 16, are eligible to get their January membership without paying.
If rolled out across Scotland, where 27 per cent of people are classed as obese, the scheme could cost up to £293million.
Scotland’s l argest health board, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, has signed a twoyear contract costing almost £300,000 with WeightWatchers.
The SNP has been accused of hypocrisy f or breaking a promise not to privatise the NHS, while critics say over- weight people should not get free handouts.
Conservative health spokesman Jackson Carlaw said: ‘We do need to draw a balance between personal responsibility and help from the state.’
Eben Wilson, of Taxpayer Scotland, said: ‘Are we encouraging people to not take responsibility for themselves? The NHS risks becoming the ultimate state nanny.’
Dr Ian Campbell, f ormer chairman of the National Obesity Forum, said: ‘The majority of people who go on weightloss programmes fail. Mainstream services don’t really delve into the psychology of why people overeat.’
NHS Grampian has already spent more t han £ 24,000 handing patients free vouchers for Scottish Slimmers and WeightWatchers.
In December, the cost for slimmers wanting to sign up to WeightWatchers was £65.80 for three months. But the health board has placed 475 people on the scheme, paying £48 a head.
In Tayside, at a cost of £55 per head, 136 new mothers have been sent to WeightWatchers to lose their baby weight.
Labour’s f ormer health spokesman Neil Findlay said: ‘During the referendum we were told by the SNP that the NHS in Scotland was under threat of privatisation.
‘The reality is that the only Government that can privatise our NHS is the SNP and they are doing so under our noses.’
A study of obese patients referred by Tayside doctors to WeightWatchers found j ust over half lost more than 5 per cent of their body weight.
A spokesman for WeightWatchers said: ‘ A one- year global study published in The Lancet in 2011 indicated that overweight and obese adults referred to WeightWatchers lost more than twice as much weight compared with those who received standard care by their local GP practice.’
Joyce Thompson, dietetic consultant in public health nutrition at NHS Tayside, said: ‘A pilot scheme to provide weight management to obese post-natal women was developed and the contract was awarded to WeightWatchers.’
An NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde spokesman said: ‘Evidence shows the WeightWatchers model works. We will evaluate this work at the end of the pilot.’
A spokesman for NHS Grampian said it was ‘seeking to halt the rise in unhealthy weight prevalence in adults’.